Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on Monday said he was fighting for the “common man’s dreams” and not Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s.

Thackeray’s remarks came just a day after Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah asked his party workers in Maharashtra to be prepared to contest the Lok Sabha and state polls alone. “We should be prepared to fight alone in 2019,” NDTV quoted him as saying.

“I will hunt but do not need to shoot from anyone else’s shoulder,” Hindustan Times quoted Thackeray as saying in an interview published in the party’s mouthpiece Saamna. “Nor will I need a gun for the hunt. We do not have only one friend. We are friends of the public.”

Thackeray also spoke about Hindutva and women’s safety. “I do not accept the Hindutva that is being adhered to in the country, for the last three-four years,” the Shiv Sena chief said. “That is not our idea of Hindutva. Our women are unsafe today, and you are protecting the cows. You can’t target people for their eating preferences.”

The Shiv Sena made a series of flip-flops over last week’s no-confidence motion against the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government. Although Shiv Sena MP Chandrakant Khaire, who is the party’s chief whip in the Lok Sabha, on July 18 asked party MPs to support the government, the party’s MPs abstained from the vote two days later.

Shiv Sena was the BJP’s ally in the 2014 general elections but contested the Assembly elections on its own a few months later. The BJP emerged as the single-largest party in the state for the first time ever after the polls.